Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (Eric Ding) is an epidemiologist and health economist and a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC, and Chief Health Economist for Microclinic International.

He is also Steering Committee member of the FAS COVID-19 Task Force, and has advised multiple governors offices, State legislators, and members of Congress & Senate on COVID-19. In January 2020, he was recognized in the media as one of the first to alert the public on the pandemic risk of COVID-19. He is also part of FAS’s work to stop COVID misinformation, and develop new data models for risk.

He was previously a faculty and researcher at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School between 2004-2020.

Dr. Feigl-Ding’s work focuses on the intersection of public health and public policy. He also currently works on behavioral interventions for prevention, Medicare cost and quality improvements, drug safety, diabetes/obesity prevention, and public health programs in the US. He has further expertise in designing and conducting randomized trials, systematic reviews, public health programs, public policy implementation, and leveraging big data for improving health systems.

He was noted in his role as a whistleblower and leader of a key two-year-long investigation into the controversial drug safety and risk data of Vioxx®, Celebrex®, and Bextra® that drew FDA and national attention. Highlighted and express-published in JAMA, as corresponding joint-first author, he was also recognized for his role in the New York Times, and in the book Poison Pills: The Untold Story of the Vioxx Drug Scandal.

A childhood survivor and cancer prevention advocate, he was called one of the ‘Facebook philanthropists‘, founding the 6 million member online Campaign for Cancer Prevention, featured in Newsweek in 2008. In total online reach, he directed disease prevention advocacy platforms with over 12 million members on Facebook Causes. He led the first ever direct-to-science online crowdfunding initiative, fundraising over $500,000 (median public donation $15) for medical research, and featured in the New York Times in 2009.

He had founded the first geo-social network and public alert system for drinking water toxic contamination, as featured in WIRED. He established the Toxin Alert Drinking Water Database with 500,000-locations nationwide for informing the public about water hazards in communities. For his work, he was awarded the 2017 Mark V. Anderson Leadership Award from Sigma Chi Foundation.

He has published in leading journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, and Health Policy. His 150+ publications have received 70,000 citations (H-Index 77). As a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, he was ranked in 2018 as among the Top 1% of all scientists worldwide.

Altogether, his competitively awarded projects as PI/Director have received over $10 million in funding. A World Economic Forum Global Shaper, he has chaired committees for the Health Directorate of the European Commission, advised the World Health Organization, Denmark Ministry of Health, and served as a member of the Global Burden of Disease Project. He also advised and successfully convinced the C-suite leaders of a major Fortune 100 food/beverage company to adopt the WHO health recommendations for added sugars.

Dr. Feigl-Ding graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with Honors in Public Health and Phi Beta Kappa. He then completed his dual doctorate in epidemiology and doctorate in nutrition, as the youngest graduate to complete his dual programs at age 23 from Harvard SPH. Teaching at Harvard for over 15 years, he has advised and mentored two dozen students and lectured in more than a dozen graduate and undergraduate courses, for which he received the Derek Bok Distinction in Teaching Award from Harvard College.